Woman with Britain's most super-powered (and super lucrative) NOSE: Perfumier Jo Malone can even smell burst pipes and if her husband's ill

Perfume guru Jo Malone’s acute sense of smell is so extraordinary that even she admits to finding it mystifying at times. Scents of every description inform every aspect of her life.

Bizarre though it may sound, Jo says she thinks, feels, sees and intuits everything through her nose. ‘Smell is like a tune in my head, with a melody and a harmony, base notes and high notes, which I then translate into fragrance and bottle,’ she says.

So, while you or I might enjoy the feel of sun on our skin, the sight of white beach towels, the taste of fresh citrus fruit, for Jo it is a mental symphony of smells that dominates all other senses — possibly the result of a rare neurological condition called synesthesia, which causes senses to overlap. Some people, for example, can hear, taste or smell colours.

This rare gift — which has won a loyal following for her bottles of perfume, such as lime, basil and mandarin, and white rose and lemon leaves — has served Jo very well.

It has been the driving force behind not one but two businesses and, in 2008, earned her an MBE. Quite something for a severely dyslexic council house girl from Bexleyheath, Kent, who started out on the kitchen table with four plastic jugs and two saucepans.

Her original empire, Jo Malone — which started life with a small shop in Walton Street, Knightsbridge, 21 years ago — was bought in 1999 by cosmetics giant Estee Lauder for ‘undisclosed millions’. Jo stayed at the helm as creative director until 2006, when a gruelling battle with aggressive breast cancer forced her to re-evaluate her life, quit and walk away to enjoy a simpler life as a wife and mum to young son Josh.

After a miserable five years in the wilderness (lounging on a beach, apparently, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be), she made a dramatic comeback in 2011 with new brand Jo Loves.

Today, aged 52, with one shop in Elizabeth Street, Belgravia, she is already talking about going ‘global’ again — despite an anxious period before re-launch when she feared (needlessly) she’d lost her olfactory powers.

But Jo’s nose, it turns out, is even more finely tuned than previously thought. It may even be worthy of scientific study. Take, for example, the time a few years ago when Jo walked into an elevator in the Carlyle Hotel in New York and knew instantly that her husband and business partner, Gary Willcox, had been there.

Range: Jo, one of whose candles is pictured above, has nine scents in her portfolio, which she says come from ‘sheer emotion and gut instinct’.

‘I was travelling and working in New York, and Gary [to whom she has been married for 31 years] decided to surprise me,’ says Jo.

‘I stepped into the elevator and said to friends: “He’s here, I know he’s here,” and everyone was going: “No, no.” When I walked into the hotel room, he was there waiting for me — so no surprise, but it was lovely to see him.

‘Another time, I got into a taxi in New York and immediately thought of one of my friends. I phoned her and said: “Have you just got out of a taxi?” and she went: “Yes! How did you know?” ’

Or how about the time Jo walked into her London apartment block, looked up at the wall in the lobby and detected an aroma that whispered ‘wet’ to her? There was a leaking pipe behind it.

‘Everyone told me I was being silly, that there was nothing wrong with the wall,’ says Jo. ‘But a couple of months later, the lobby flooded — and the problem came from the exact spot I had smelled wet. I can even tell if our dog is going to be ill. She has a smell about her.’

Even more remarkably, Jo is convinced she detected that Gary was suffering a serious illness — by the most subtle of changes in his aroma. ‘Gary had been a bit poorly and I kept saying to him: “Come here, let me smell you.” There was a strip of skin on the right side of his neck that just seemed different. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.’

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A few months later, he was diagnosed with a condition that affected his adrenal glands, similar to Addison’s disease.

Once he had treatment to control his cortisol levels, the scent Jo had detected vanished.

Jo agrees this uncanny power can sound a bit surreal and far-fetched, so she is rather excited to find she is not alone and could be one of a select group of ‘super-sniffers’. She is intrigued by the recent story of Joy Milne, from Perth, who detected her husband’s illness through smell six years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

‘His smell changed and it seemed difficult to describe,’ said Joy of her husband, Les, who died in June aged 65. ‘It wasn’t all of a sudden. It was very subtle, a musky smell.’

Joy only linked it to Parkinson’s after joining the charity Parkinson’s UK and noticing other sufferers had the same distinct smell. After mentioning it to scientists, she was tested by Edinburgh University and found to be very accurate at telling who had the disease.

Now, the charity is funding research at Manchester, Edinburgh and London in the hope of finding the molecular signature responsible for the odour, which could lead to earlier detection.

‘I think scientists are realising that there are some people who have this unbelievable sense of smell, and it may be possible to predict illness way before someone shows symptoms,’ says Jo.

‘In my case, I think it comes from being dyslexic. My brain connects to smell much faster than visual things, which is really intriguing. When Gary was ill, there was clearly something connecting to my nose on a cellular level — it must pick up more than just nice smells.

‘I know it can sound a bit crazy, which is why I have never really talked about it, but Gary said to me after we watched Joy Milne talking on television: “Ah, now I know why you kept sniffing me.” ’

For someone whose sense of smell is so acute, Jo was distressed to temporarily lose it while undergoing a gruelling course of chemotherapy in New York, after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2003.

‘I was 37 when I was diagnosed. I had the world in my hand and, suddenly, I was given this terrible news. During chemotherapy, I completely lost my sense of smell.

‘When I returned to Jo Malone, I remember standing in the new store in New York, thinking: “I don’t belong here any more.” No one at Estee Lauder made me feel unwelcome, but I just felt: “It’s time for me to go.” My little boy was only two and I wanted to be around for him.

‘I think whenever you go through something life-changing, you go through a period of re-evaluation. If I’d given myself six months to a year, I probably would have felt different. But the first morning I woke up, I realised I’d made the right decision for the business, but the wrong decision for me.

‘Every single day, I’d think: “What am I going to do with myself?” I didn’t know where to put all this creative energy.

‘Gary is a very easy-going guy and he kept saying to me: “Jo, let’s just enjoy this moment”, but I was like a caged tiger.’

Jo’s golden handcuffs deal with Jo Malone prevented her from starting a new cosmetics business for five years after quitting. Once that time was up, returning as Jo Loves was far tougher than she thought. ‘One day, I thought: “I want to try again.” No one knew I’d left Jo Malone and my name was so synonymous with [that] brand, but I was a living person with the same dreams. Those first 18 months were the toughest of my life.

‘Creating fragrances didn’t come back to me naturally. I’d ask myself: “Did I have one lucky break in life?” It took me six months, but I had to work at it again.

‘It so resonated with me when I heard [pop star] Adele talking about her musical comeback after taking a break to have a baby and that fear of not being able to create again.’

Unable to use her full name, which now belonged to Estee Lauder for marketing, Jo struggled to come up with an alternative. It was her son who suggested ‘Jo Loves’.

‘We were sitting round the kitchen table and Josh just said: “Mum, why don’t you call it Jo Loves? You love fragrance and fragrance loves you,” ’ says Jo, who launched in 2011 and opened her shop in 2013.

‘I was still very proud of what I’d achieved with Jo Malone, but felt I’d lost my self-identity. I am not someone who gets depressed at all, but I felt very anxious I had lost my connection with creativity.

‘I can create a fragrance, even if you blindfold me and tie my hands behind my back, but it’s those really magical moments I am trying to create and it’s frustrating when that inspiration is not around you.’

Jo has a stingray to thank for providing the inspiration for her

first Jo Loves signature scent, Pomelo. Strolling alone one morning on a beach in Parrot Cay, on the island of Turks and Caicos, she spotted a stingray in the sea. When she walked, it followed; when she stopped, so did the stingray.

‘It was such a beautiful moment. It was just me and the stingray, and it moved me. I walked up the beach, saw all these beautiful, white towels rolled up on the beds, the white of the sand; I could smell lunch in the distance.

‘I walked into the villa, with its white sheets and cedarwood floors, and this wonderful smell came to me of the exotic citrus fruit pomelo . . . I knew what I was going to do. I don’t analyse the way I work too much. If I do, it disappears.

‘It’s like creating music. I gather the notes and add them to the fragrance, one by one.’

Jo now has nine scents in her range — the newest, Red Truffle 21, took three years. When she creates, it comes from ‘sheer emotion and gut instinct’.

Her boutique, the keys for which were presented to Jo by Gary on her 50th birthday, is, incredibly, the very same shop in which she used to work at the age of 16, when it was a deli and florist.

Today, her life has come full circle. ‘To have survived in more ways than one, to think: “Wow, I’m still here”, and to continue what you love doing is a real privilege and a blessing.

‘I can’t deny there are moments when it’s difficult, but I’m proud of building that little brand from four plastic jugs and two saucepans — and the biggest cosmetic giant bought it from me.

‘I have no regrets. Sometimes, you may think what you did in the past couldn’t be bettered, but it spurs you on. The joy of doing something successful is to then push the boundaries. This is now what I am, this is where I am going and what I want to do. What’s not to be proud of?’